DESIGN AND SIMULATION OF WATER LEVEL MONITORING AND CONTROL SYSTEM IN MINI HYDRO POWER PLANT

Abstract

In common mini hydro power plants in Indonesia, the control of water levels in intake, sand-trap and head pond is carried out manually. This conventional manual control system may cause damages of waterway and all its components due to overflow or transient flow of water during load shedding or black out of electricity grid. The damages eventually may increase cost of maintenance and increase the risk of waterway collapse or excessive water hammer in penstock pipe. This type of collapses often happen in many mini hydro power plants in Indonesia. The risk of damages can be reduced by installing water level control and monitoring system in all key water way components such as in intake, sand-trap and head pond. Some other mini hydro power plants have installed water level control and monitoring system. But the price of such control system is still very expensive and high operation and maintenance cost. Thus, this thesis work designs and simulates simple and inexpensive the water level control and monitoring system for a mini hydro power plant. In this thesis work, the design and simulation of the water level control and monitoring system are carried out by a simulated three water tanks where the water levels in the tanks are monitored and controlled by using ultrasonic level sensors and motorized valves respectively. A simple and inexpensive Arduino based water level control and monitoring system is successfully designed to fulfil the requirement of quick or fast respond for water level control in the simulated model.